Gloria in Brazil

In addition to having a bunch of foreign films on my DVR to get through, I've mentioned that I recorded several films during the spring run of Two for One on TCM. Since that miniseries is being replayed, I've been going through those movies to do posts on as well. Next up is a film that ticks both checkboxes, a foreign film that was selected by Two For One co-host Gina Prince-Bythewood: Central Station. It airs tonight (Dec. 7) at 8:00 PM.

Fernanda Montenegro plays Dona Dora, a retired schoolteacher living in a shabby apartment in Rio de Janeiro. To help make ends meet in her retirement, she goes down to Rio's Central train station every day and provides a service for the illiterates passing through the station: she takes dictation and writes letters that the illiterates want to send to someone in a distant part of Brazil. Dora also seems to act partly as a Lucy from Peanuts-style psychiatric counselor as well as knowing how to help her clients write their letters well. However, Dora is jaded, and sometimes doesn't actually send the letters as she reveals to her best friend and neighbor Irene.

One day, Ana shows up with her nine-year-old son Josué asking Dora to write a letter to Josué's father Jésus, who lives in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Jésus drank heavily and presumably beat Ana which is why she fled to Rio where she could blend in to the mass of humanity. But Josué has been wondering about his father, and Ana is thinking now might be a good time for them to meet. Dora, however, plans not to send this letter either. The next day, Ana comes back asking to edit the letter, but after this meeting, Ana leaves the train station and gets run over by a bus, killing her.

Josué apparently doesn't have a home in Rio to go back to, and certainly doesn't have any family in the city, so Dora takes him back to her apartment. That's not a very good arrangement either, so ultimately one of the other people at the station with a stall has the idea of taking Josué to an "agency" that supposedly sells orphaned Brazilian children to wealthy people in first-world countries looking for a child to adopt. This also gives Dora a goodly sum of money. However, Irene is no dummy, and knows that such "agencies" -- and why would such an agency be located in a nondescript tenement apartment? -- are at best fronts for human trafficking, with the possibility of something much worse. Fearing for Josué's safety, Dora decides to kidnap him from the agency. But the two people who run it want their money back, so Dora knows she's not going to be safe in her apartment. This leads her to try to take Josué up to Pernambuco to the address Ana wanted the letter sent to, in the hopes of reuniting Josué with his father. Along the way, Josué and Dora develop a close emotional bond, but will they ever find his father?

As I was watching Central Station, I couldn't help but think of the Gena Rowlands movie Gloria since I only watched it a few months back and both have the same theme of a woman on the run with a child presenting all sorts of problems. Each movie is excellent in its own way. Central Station has a tremendous Oscar-nominated performance by Montenegro. The story also works well, and the kid playing Josué isn't cloying.

Central Station may be set among the lower classes of Brazilian society, but the story it tells is one that's universal and touches on themes that anyone can get regardless of cultural upbringing. It's a film that's not to be missed.